Old Grey Lady in Red China

The New York Times this week launched cn.nytimes.com, its first foreign-language website, joining several Western newspapers and media outlets like the BBC, Forbes, Newsweek, and Time that have published Chinese-language editions, with varying degrees of editorial and business success. The site, with staff in Beijing and Hong Kong and a server located outside of mainland China, will feature approximately 20 stories a day from the roughly 200 produced by the New York Times and also include roughly 10 pieces of original Chinese content daily. Philip Pan, a former Washington Post Beijing chief, and Cao Haili, a former Caixin reporter and Harvard University Niemann fellow, will run the site. The New York Times brings its sterling reputation to a place where its competitors have had to make difficult choices between self-censorship and unwanted government interference. "There are a lot of editing choices, but not censorship choices," says Joseph Kahn, the Times' foreign editor and former Beijing bureau chief who will oversee the site from New York. "We're not going to withhold stories."